Through deep introspection, I came to a particular insight in the past few days: a common theme of my trust issues is the degree to which I’ve experienced betrayal in my lifetime.

Even in the past few years, even in this year, I have experienced betrayal by people I thought I knew, people I cared about, and people I trusted.

This experience seems to have occurred far more frequently when I was a child.

In essence, I feel betrayed from a number of directions- by my society, my family, by my culture, by people I once called friends, and by my religion.

An ever-present thing that seems to be a the very root of all my anger at people in general is that even when I was young, I hated for people to tell me things that made no sense. The society around me did and said things, held certain attitudes, that even as early as age five I could see made absolutely no sense, and this irritated me to no end.

As an adult, I can now look back to that pent-up aggression and remember always that I am not beholden to follow the rules of the society around me just because everyone else does. I can observe the local customs, see what makes sense, and go from there instead of mindlessly parroting others, which seems to often be the case.

Too many times as a child, I experienced being told that I was smart and THEN ridiculed when I gave my opinion on matters. This happened too many times to recount.

Now, that doesn’t mean that one should not repeat or act like anyone else whatsoever. Give credit where credit is due, and if you sincerely arrived at similar conclusions to someone else, especially independently, then by all means embrace those conclusions.

There are people in the world who are trustworthy. No one is 100% perfect, and anyone can be mistaken and let you down; however, there are people who are truly dutiful and guard their own darkness to keep it from hurting others. Don’t worry- not everyone is going to betray you.